What Would the MAGA Party Look Like in a Multi-Party System?

So, what would happen if we became a multi-party system?  My guess is the Democratic Party would splinter into several different parties that would generally form a coalition.  These would clearly include an authoritarian Left -- call it the Hamas Party.  But I would expect the Hamas Party to be small and easily marginalized, at least within the corridors of power.  (It might take to the streets as a way of making up for that, which would only add to its marginalization).  But I would expect the other parties to be harmless -- a bit overly nannyish at times, but not really dangerous.

I could see the Republicans splitting several ways.  They might become the Republican Party and the MAGA Party, or the Economic Royalist Party, the MAGA Party and the Theocratic Party.  But I have no doubt that the MAGA Party would be large enough to be significant, quite probably the dominant party on the Right.  Also clear -- so long as Donald Trump leads the MAGA Party, it would be authoritarian.  That is necessarily so because Trump is, by nature, an authoritarian who is incapable of grasping democracy, the rule of law, or anything but his own advantage.

 But Trump will not be with us forever, and civic virtue is not dead yet among our Republican elite. Could a MAGA party without Trump become a democratic conservative party, either driving out the authoritarian elements or containing them?  Or is it inherently authoritarian.

Consider the graph above.  It evaluates the electorate from the 2016 election on two axes.  One is economic liberalism/conservatism, and one is social liberalism/conservatism.  Unsurprisingly, Clinton won the economic liberal/social liberal quadrant and Trump won the economic conservative/social conservative quadrant. It is no doubt not surprising that the economic liberal/social conservative quadrant was more contested.  But, significantly, Trump did much better in this quadrant.  Also significant -- the economic conservative/social liberal quadrant is almost empty.

That last is significant because elites calling for a third party invariably talk about a third party that is fiscally conservative and socially liberal -- sort of libertarians lite.  But there is no appetite for such a party among the general public. The call for such a party is a purely elite phenomenon.  No wonder so many third parties fail!

But the opposite quadrant, the economically liberal/socially conservative quadrant is one that our political elites have largely overlooked.  When a candidate has appealed to that quadrant, it has usually been a demagogue like Donald Trump or George Wallace.  This quadrant is often called populist, which is often simply used as a synonym for authoritarians, and certainly figures like Trump or Wallace are authoritarians.  But the more charitable reading is that this combination is simply Christian Democratic, that its anger is driven mostly the marginalization of such views from the corridors of power, even as large swaths of the population (the graph suggests, about a third) hold such views.  By such a charitable reading, Trump's appeal is that he was the first leading figure to actually offer such an outlook and that if members of this quadrant are given political influence commensurate with their numbers, they might take their place as a democratic conservative party -- a swing party, even.

With Donald Trump out of the way (dead, or too feeble to lead), what would such a party look like?

It would be moderate on most economic issues.  It would be opposed to either shrinking our expanding our existing welfare state.  It would be eager for tax cuts for itself, indifferent to hostile to large cuts at the top, and indifferent to mildly in favor of tax increases at the top or imports taxes.  It would oppose any consumer oriented regulations that caused it any sort of inconvenience.  It would favor NIMBY-ish land-use regulations to preserve the character of neighborhoods, protectionist measures, and E-Verify to prevent hiring of illegal immigrants.  My guess is it would be largely indifferent to any other economic regulations, with no very strong feelings one way or the other.

It would oppose immigration, especially from the global South.  My guess is that any serious attempt to exclude immigrants would quickly teach the MAGA Party just how dependent we are on immigrant labor and they would make their peace with work visas, so long as the visas were strictly for work and did not offer the possibility of citizenship or permanent legal residence.  They would generally oppose family migration or asylum migration.

They would be tough on crime, pro-police, pro-gun, and anti-affirmative action.  They would generally wish to avoid foreign wars, foreign allianaces, and any sort of foreign entanglements. My guess is that there would be a religiously oriented wing opposed to gay marriage and abortion.  I would also guess that this wing would learn that hard way that this was political suicide and focus instead on carving out religious exemptions from gay marriage and opposing abortion by moral suasion. 

So, could such a party become a serious democratic conservative party, respect the rules of the game, accept defeat, apply the rule of law in an even-handed manner, and focus on cultural cohesion without giving way to bigotry?  Or would they just be the Bigot Party under another name?